The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax.
Constitution Quotes
A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people.
The Constitution is the origin and measure of legislative authority. It says to legislators, thus far ye shall go and no farther. Not a particle of it should be shaken; not a pebble of it should be removed.
Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars . This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.
It is the exclusive province of congress to change a state of peace into a state of war.
In questions of power, let no more be said of confidence in Man, but bind him down with the chains of the Constitution.
Constitutions and laws will prevail over much, and allegiance to them is a high duty, but when they come into conflict with a deep-rooted moral sentiment, and with the principles of liberty and humanity, they must be modified, or else they will be broken to pieces.
By the end of the 20th century, majority opinion had become the determining factor in all that government does. The rule of law was cast aside, leaving the Constitution a shell of what it once was.
I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand […]
In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. Beside the objection to such a mixture to heterogeneous powers, the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one […]
